The compound effect - Darren Hardy

The compound effect is the principle of reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices. even though the results are massive, the steps, at the moment, don’t feel significant. What they don’t realize is that these small, seemingly insignificant

Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = Radical diff

The phenomenal power of the compound effect is that simple. The difference between people who employ the compound effect for their benefit compared to their peers who allow the same effect to work against them is almost inconceivable. With enough time and consistency, the outcomes become visible. Better yet, they’re totally predictable.

Choices

Everything in your life exists because you first made a choice about something. Choices are at the root of every one of your results. Each choice starts a behavior that over time becomes a habit. Choose poorly, and you might find yourself back at the drawing board, forced to make new, often harder choices. Every decision, no matter how slight, alters the trajectory of your life. You’ve been sleepwalking through your choices, you’re not even aware you’re making them. Our choices are often shaped by our culture and upbringing. They can be so entwined in our routine behaviors and habits that they seem beyond our control.

You have to be willing to give 100 percent with zero expectation of receiving anything in return. Only when you’re willing to take 100 percent responsibility for making the relationship work will it work. Otherwise, a relationship left to change will always be vulnerable to disaster.

Luck is when opportunity meets preparation - isn’t enough.

Luck = Preparation (personal growth) +Attitude (belief / mindset) + Opportunity ( a good thing coming your way) + Action ( doing something about it )

No matter what has happened to you, take complete responsibility for it, good or bad victory or defeat. Own it. “ The day you graduate from childhood to adulthood is the day you take full responsibility for your life." From this day forward, choose to be 100 percent responsible for your life. Eliminate all of your excuses, and embrace the fact that you are freed by your choices, as long as you assume personal responsibility for them.

The first step toward change is awareness. If you want to get from where you are to where you want to be, you have to start by becoming aware of the choices that lead you away from your desired destination.

What’s simple to do is also simple not to do, The magic is not in the complexity of the task, the magic is in the doing of simple things repeatedly and long enough to ignite the miracle of the compound effect.

The earlier you start making small changes, the more powerful the compound effect works in your favor. The key is to start NOW. Every great act, every fantastic adventure, start with small steps.

Every choice and every decision they make at the moment is getting them closer to that ultimate goal.

Habits

Our habits and routines allow us to use minimal conscious energy for everyday tasks. They help keep us sane and enable us to handle most situations reasonably well. and because we don’t have to think about the mundane, we can focus our mental energy on more creative and enriching thoughts. Habits can be helpful as long as they’re good habits.

You can condition your automatic and unconscious responses to be those of a developed champion. with enough practice and repetition, any behavior, good or bad, becomes automatic over time.

It’s time to wake up and realize that the habits you indulge in could be compounding your life into a repeated disaster. The slightest adjustments to your daily routines can dramatically alter the outcomes in your life.

Your choices are only meaningful when you connect them to your desires and dreams. The wisest and most motivating choices are the ones aligned with that which you identify as your purpose, your core self, and your highest values. You’ve got to have a reason if you want to make significant improvements to your life. And to make you want to make the necessary changes, your why must be something that is fantastically motivating to you.

Extraordinary accomplishment does not guarantee extraordinary joy, happiness, love, and a sense of meaning. These two skill sets feed off each other and make me believe that success without fulfillment is a failure.

When your actions conflict with your values, you’ll end up unhappy, frustrated, and despondent. Decision-making is also easier when you are certain of your core values.

Enemies give us a reason to stand tall with courage. Having to fight challenges your skills, your character, and your resolve. It forces you to assess and exercise your talents and abilities. Without a motivating fight, we can become fat and lazy, we lose our strength and purpose.

If you are not making the progress that you would like to make and are capable of making, it is simply because your goals are not clearly defined. Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe and enthusiastically act upon must inevitably come to pass.

When you define your goals, you give your brain something new to look for and focus on. It’s as if you’re giving your mind a new set of eyes from which to see all the people, ideas, and creativity. With this new perspective, your mind proceeds to match up on the outside what you want most on the inside your goal.

“Top people have very clear goals. They know who they are and they know what they want. They write it down and they make plans for its accomplishment." Unsuccessful people carry their goals around in their heads like a marble rattling around in a can, and we say a goal that is not in writing is merely a fantasy. fantasies are like bullets with no powder in the cartridge. People go through life shooting blanks without written goals and that’s the starting point.

Go for a whole-life success balance in all aspects of life that are important to you: business, health and well-being, spirituality, family and relationships, and lifestyle.

If you want to have more, you have to become more. Success is not something you pursue. What you pursue will elude you; it can be like trying to chase butterflies. Success is something you attract by the person you become.

You → Choice (decision) + Behavior (action) + Habit (repeated action) + compounded(time) = Goals.

Pick a vice, something you do in moderation, but you know doesn’t contribute to your highest good, and take yourself on a thirty-day wagon run. If you find it seriously difficult to abstain for those thirty days, you may have found a habit worth cutting out your life.

“You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine” John C Maxwell.

If you really want to maintain a good habit, make sure you pay attention to it at least once a day, and you’re far more likely to succeed.

1. Set Yourself up to succeed.
2. Think addition, not subtraction.
3. Go for PDA: Public display of accountability
4. Find a success buddy
5. Competition and camaraderie.
6. Celebrate.

Ordinary is easy. Extraordinary is what will separate you from the crowd.

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge.” - Dr. Martin Luther king jr. When you press on despite difficulty, tedium, and hardship, that’s when you earn your improvement and gain strides on the competition.

Science shows that patterns of thoughts and actions repeated many times create what’s called a neuro-signature or a “brain groove” or a series of interconnected neurons that carry the thought patterns of a particular habit.

Momentum

Newton’s first law, also known as the law of inertia. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion unless something stops their momentum.

You get into the groove, the “zone” by doing things we’ve covered so far:

1. Making new choices based on your goals and core values.
2. Putting those choices to work through new positive behaviors.
3. Repeating those healthy actions long enough to establish new habits.
4. Building routines and rhythms into your daily disciplines.
5. Staying consistent over a long enough period of time.

Developing a routine of predictable, daily disciplines prepares you to be victorious on the battlefield of life.

Along with good habits, each has developed routines for accomplishing necessary daily disciplines. It’s the only way any of us can predictably regulate our behavior. A daily routine built on good habits and disciplines separates the most successful among us from everyone else.

Life is simply a collection of experiences; our goal should be to increase the frequency and intensity of good experiences. Once a month we try to do something that creates an experience that has some memorable intensity. Something out of the ordinary that has heightened experience and creates an indelible memory.

Winning the race is all about pace. Be the tortoise. The person who, given enough time, will beat anybody in any competition as a result of positive habits and behaviors applied consistently.

Influences

Everyone is affected by 3 kinds of influences: input (what you feed your mind), association ( the people with whom you spend time), and environment ( your surroundings).

Your brain is not designed to make you happy. Your brain has only one agenda in mind: survival. It is always watching for signs of “lack and attack” Your brain is programmed to seek out the negative, dwindling resources, destructive weather, etc.

Mentoring is your true legacy. It is the greatest inheritance you can give to others. And it should never end. It is why you get up every day. To teach and be taught.

You will get in life what you accept and expect you are worthy of. If you tolerate disrespect, you will be respected. if you tolerate people being late and making you wait, people will show up late for you. It’s amazing how life will organize around the standards you set for yourself. Some people think they’re the victims of other people’s behavior, but in actuality, we have control over how people treat us. Protect your emotional, mental and physical space so you can live with peace, rather than in chaos and stress the world will hurl upon you.

Acceleration

When conditions are great, things are easy, there aren’t any distractions, no one is interrupting, temptations aren’t luring, and nothing is disturbing your stride; that too is when most everyone else does great. It’s not until situations are difficult that problems come up and temptation is great. Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.

When you hit the wall in your disciplines, routines, rhythms, and consistency, realize that’s when you are separating yourself from your old self, scaling that wall, and finding your new powerful, triumphant and victorious self.

Viewing yourself as your toughest competitor is one of the best ways to multiply your results. Go above and beyond when you hit the wall. Another way to multiply your results is by pushing past what other people expect of you by doing more than “Enough”